Love and human nature

WHAT IS LOVE? BIBLE’S DEFINITION OF LOVE

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it does not dishonor, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” Such a beautiful Bible’s definition of love comes from the St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Do you know the feeling, when you are ready to give everything and to do almost everything for your beloved? When you would give the best to your beloved even if you yourself are left behind with nothing? And if your loved one would become sick and helpless, would you take care of him forever, no matter how hard it would be? If your answer is yes, then you know the meaning of true love.

SELFISHNESS

St. Paul’s words are so true and simple, they seem even self-evident. Then why is it so hard to implement them in real life? Even then, if we know, that we truly love somebody… Why after some time of living side by side do we become unpatient, less kind, more proud, selfish and irritated? Because selfishness is in human nature – can love free us from it? Everything we try to achieve in our lives is based on our selfishness – the career, a better salary, a bigger and nicer house, a more expensive car, fame and honor and sometimes even friends and a beautiful wife or husband. We want to feel important, honored, we want others to admire us, we want to live good and to have good things around us. All our perception of life and values are based on selfishness. Love stands in conflict with our way of life and even with the world’s economical system – how can we be unselfish?

When living and working for selfish purposes, we get in conflict with all the values of St. Paul’s citation. When we don’t get, what we expect, we become unpatient and unkind. Emotions play a great role in here. If we don’t have something, that others have, we become envious, but if we have something more, we become proud and boastful. If we get irritated and angry, we may become rude and dishonorous. How can our beloved ones live the way they want – we want them to do “the right thing” – to live their lives our way! And we do remember the wrongs, don’t we like to say “I told you so!”, I was right and next time do it my way! And do we always trust and hope? We trust, but check and hope, but hesitate…

We can be unselfish for some time and work for our beloved, help and support, we can give a lot, but can we honestly say, that we don’t expect a reward? For true love we shouldn’t. Maybe we could say, that we expect only true love backwards. But what does it mean “true love backwards”? In everyday situations it would be a favour, a gift, a gesture of attention and most likely something, that your beloved one would do your way. Isn’t it still selfish – to give and to expect something in reward?

AM I BEING LOVED?

On the other hand, if you don’t get a reply to your efforts, does it mean, that your beloved one doesn’t love you? This is a point, where we often make mistakes and become upset, which can lead to arguments, distress and separation. But what, if your beloved one displays love in another way, than you expect? What if he / she makes efforts, that you don’t notice or consider as self-evident? The more expectations you have, the less likely you will become content. Don’t expect anything backwards and you will not fail.

EMOTIONALITY

Another opponent to love is our emotionality. How often you have said or done something you don’t really mean reflects your level of emotionality. What emotions does it create, when your partner acts in the way you don’t want to? Or says something you don’t want to hear? Do you become irritated and angry? It would be much easier to solve all disagreements, if you had no emotions. But you still have them, so what to do with them? Expressing anger is not a good solution, but keeping it inside is not good either. Keeping the anger will lead to deeper and deeper frustration, which will rise an explosion of emotions one day. The best solution would be to solve the disagreement, when the emotions have calmed down by trying to control them. And it is important to understand – anger and irritation also come from selfishness. If we would really learn to put selfishness aside, there would be no anger and we could actually fulfill the beautiful definition of love in our lives.

If we could learn to fulfill the difficult task of love, then love would never fail and then we could see, how beautiful it is…

You are welcome to share your experience about love and human nature here. Do you agree with St. Paul’s statement of love? Is it easy for you to implement it in real life? Do you agree, that the world is full of selfishness? Is there a way, how we can avoid it in our lives?